In Their Minds
by eshelei
Summary: Rachel and Jesse could be so good to one another. They have the same dreams, the same fantasies... and they both can't get away from the demons in their heads. Psych hospital AU. St. Berry.
1. Chapter 1

"Dorothy is very like me," Rachel says.

Rachel and Jesse sit on opposite sides of the couch, their legs spread between them, touching thoughtlessly. It isn't romantic, but there's a deep sense of intimacy that they share—everyone can see it. In front of them, the television plays _The Wizard of Oz_. They like to watch it once a week, because sometimes there's nothing else to look forward to.

They sit in a large room with pale yellow walls, and if they look up, they'll see an inky blue-black, startlingly realistic mural of the night sky, with the constellations mapped out in glow-in-the-dark paint. Kurt worked for months on it.

"I know," Jesse responds softly. He offers her a shy smile and says, "You're a better singer, though."

In these moments it's easy to tell that Jesse is being himself. At other times, he's very brash and outgoing and cocky, but right now he is introspective and quiet and kind. Rachel always feels a surge of genuine affection for that side of him. She smiles back.

"Thank you." She watches the movie silently for a moment, looking wistful. Then, she goes on, "If I'm better, I shouldn't worry so much about Regionals."

Jesse looks at her and frowns.

"That doesn't mean anything," he reminds her gently.

"Sometimes you just don't understand," she says, looking away.

* * *

><p>"I'm kind of in love with you," Jesse said one day when they were kissing in his car.<p>

The driver's seat was reclined all the way back, so Jesse was lying almost flat, and Rachel was lying on him, her knees planted around his thighs. They'd been kissing outside her house for what felt like hours, even though it was probably only thirty minutes or so. She'd invited him inside, but he knew her dads had rules about her shutting the door when she had a boy in her room, and so he really only liked to go in when they weren't there.

It wasn't that he had some grand dreams about getting in her pants (or up her tiny skirt), especially not after the mini-freakout she had last time he thought that was going to happen, but he wasn't going to make out with a girl with her door wide open, and she probably wouldn't be on him like this if her dads might see at any moment, either.

"What?"

"I'm in love with you," he repeated, and went back to kissing her neck without a thought, as though it weren't a big deal.

"I'm—I'm in love with you too," she said.

Jesse pulled back; he looked surprised. "I—thank you."

Rachel wondered whether that was the first time anyone had ever said it back to him, before. He seemed to not expect her to return the sentiment.

* * *

><p>Jesse sits on one of the uncomfortable plastic yellow chairs, his elbows on the table in front of him, with his head in his hands. He's massaging his forehead and blinking rapidly, trying to hold back a wave of unexplainable tears. Just minutes ago, he was painting (albeit poorly) and looking sideways at Rachel and sharing in a joke that only the two of them ever really seemed to understand.<p>

"This is pointless," he says angrily, standing so quickly and carelessly that he knocks his chair backwards, and a bottle of paint is smacked off the table, falling onto the floor and forcing a glob of purple paint out like a bruise against the mottled gray tiles. "I'm not fucking going to paint, and I'm not going to sit here with you anymore, and I'm not going to listen to you talk about your fucking delusions about life."

Jesse is pointing to Rachel, who looks dangerously close to crying. She knows this isn't Jesse, but the words are still ones she's heard from so many people before that she can't help but think it must be a little bit true. That she really isn't worth their time, for them to listen to her.

"I'm tired of being stuck in _here_," he says derisively, pointing to his head. "I'm sick and fucking tired of being held back. I could be—so much more!"

Rachel cries when Jesse is forced out of the room. She yells his name, but he doesn't respond to it.

* * *

><p>She could feel him pulling away from her when the bomb about her mom was dropped on her; it was understandable, she thought. Rachel suspected that the only reason that Jesse had begun dating her at all was because Shelby was her mother. Shelby probably compelled him to do it. She should have known it, she thought to herself—nobody at McKinley liked her, so why would anyone else?<p>

Rachel's self-esteem, admittedly, wasn't all the best to begin with, but once she felt him pulling away from her, it sort of hit rock bottom. She wanted to call him and ask him—what was so repulsive about her that after that long of dating, she hadn't even made him like her a little bit? But he would probably deny it. Jesse was a great actor, she thought.

She doesn't think about his side of it—that maybe that _love_ wasn't a sham after all. It hurt her too much to even consider his side of the story. And it was just so much easier to fall back into Finn's arms. After all, Finn was waiting in the wings. He'd wanted her when Jesse courted her, right? At least—one person—one person found her desirable.

Rachel looked at him reproachfully across the choir room; he was behind the piano and she was sitting in one of the chairs. She hated herself for wishing that he would come closer to her, put his arm around her, and pull her to him. She hated herself for feeling like she was still in love with him, even though she'd deduced he was acting on Shelby's orders. She just—wished she could know if any of it was genuine. But there he was, across the room, looking intent on the adults and their business, even as Rachel stared at him—hoping that after practice, he would come to her and hold out his hand, and offer to drive her home.


	2. Chapter 2

When Rachel sees Jesse next, it's across the room at breakfast; she cranes her neck to see him. He seems to be muttering to himself, and she suspects that, although he is sitting by himself, today he is not truly alone. In a way, she knows how he feels, but in another, she has no idea at all. He stares down at his plate, dragging his fork through the yolk of an egg. Rachel watches it burst, and he looks up at her, then, as though he had sensed her staring at him. She gives him a shaky smile, but his look is grave.

Rachel looks away, pretending that she hadn't been staring—hadn't been searching for a reason to get up and go sit with him. They always sat together, but not today.

When she tries to catch his eye again, he's gone. The eggs remain on his plate.

* * *

><p>Rachel spent hours washing the egg residue from her hair. The egging had shaken her up, but in a way she knew why he had done it. That's why she'd told him to do it. She told him to break it, because Vocal Adrenaline was standing there, and those were the people who controlled Jesse, when it came down to it. Yes, there was Shelby; she was their coach and mentor, but peer pressure was the driving force behind Vocal Adrenaline. That was why they dressed the same, moved as a group, and were in-tune enough to finish one another's sentences. It wasn't even a particularly affectionate group, but Jesse was inextricably connected to these people. Rachel understood that.<p>

And she could never, never tear him away from them.

* * *

><p>In the main room, the one with the pale yellow walls, Rachel sees Jesse every evening. True, in the last few evenings, their discussion has been sparse. Ever since his outburst in the art room, he has been less talkative than usual, and she gets the feeling that when he speaks, it isn't <em>him<em> speaking. But he's always been there, even when he's brooding.

But today, he's nowhere to be found. She comes in around seven in the evening, after finishing dinner late, and she looks for him; she sees everyone else. Santana, Brittany, and Quinn are playing a board game (although Quinn's pieces have to be moved for her, because her hands shake too much). Finn and Kurt are whispering in the corner, and Rachel would swear that Kurt is looking Finn up and down like a piece of meat, even though he isn't; she's always had the strange feeling that he had this massive crush on Finn, but nobody else sees it. Even Jesse doesn't, and they nearly always have the same opinions on things.

Sam is bent over a desk and scribbling something in his notebook, probably some kind of terrible fiction about death or something.

Everyone else is scattered around the room, doing whatever they do to pass time. Rachel has always thought that none of them really liked her, although they have not, in reality, shown her any animosity. But she remembers the things they've said to her, about her being annoying, and being a _diva_. She does, even if nobody else does.

Rachel looks again at Kurt and Finn, who look up every once in a while to stare at her. At least, that's what she thinks is going on. She wonders what they're saying about her.

She turns away, clenching her hands; nobody likes it when she accuses them of talking about her. They always deny it.

But Jesse isn't in the room, and Rachel is starting to panic a little. If Jesse were checking out, he'd tell her. But his parents don't really seem to want him around much, and he can't exactly leave on his own, because he just turned seventeen, and if he isn't here—_where could he be_?

So she swallows her pride and walks toward Kurt and Finn, because—out of anyone, they were most likely to be nice to her.

"Hi," she says.

They smile in return, and both mumble greetings.

"Listen, Rachel…" Kurt says, and he reaches out a hand to touch her shoulder. "We're sorry about Jesse. We know you—"

Rachel blinks rapidly as he hesitates; she knows why he can't just say that she's his best friend, and he's hers. Because Rachel sometimes calls him her boyfriend and sometimes she doesn't. And it breaks her heart that sometimes Jesse pulls her close and kisses her for hours, and sometimes he's shy and mellow and he does nothing more than hold her hand (as a friend). It's so… confusing.

"What are you sorry about?" she asks, already feeling like she can't handle what might come next.

Kurt exchanges a significant look with Finn.

"They… found him this morning. In his room," Finn says gently.

Rachel can feel something inside of her clench. She finds it hard to breathe.

"Is he—"

"We don't know. They won't tell—"

But Rachel isn't listening anymore. She's turning and she's running out of the room, into the hallway. She doesn't even know where she's going, but she's running bodily into an orderly and falling to the floor, and images of Jesse swim in her hazy vision, blurred by the tears she can already feel. Rachel has always been emotional; she cries when she sings solos, she has been known to yell at Finn, or Jesse, or anyone about how much they're hurting her, but this is like nothing she's ever felt before. She's being absolutely torn apart.

And the worst thing is that the orderly doesn't have any idea where Jesse is, or if he's alive, and nobody else will tell her, when they come and hold her arms away from her body, and when they carry her back to her room, and all she wants is a few answers. But nobody has them.

* * *

><p>Rachel didn't see Jesse again until he performed with Vocal Adrenaline at Regionals. She stood in the back and watched them; even after they had all come together as a club, she didn't really feel welcome to the hospital with the rest of them. Besides, she had to see him. There was a pressing need in her to see him perform, even though he was back with <em>them<em>. No—she understood, she really did. They had their hands on him, and she had been unable—and always would be unable—to tear him away from them.

But still, there was a part of her that realized that this wasn't the real Jesse. The real Jesse wasn't that much of a showman. No, he liked to perform, but the Jesse she knew preferred a piano and his voice, and he wasn't that theatrical. This Jesse—the one looking at the crowd that cockily… she didn't recognize him.

It was probably also because of the members of Vocal Adrenaline constantly behind him, around him, voices merging with his.

She was relieved when they finished.


	3. Chapter 3

Without Jesse, time passes strangely for Rachel. One day she's lying on her back on the couch in the pale yellow room, staring at a particularly bright star painted on the ceiling, reaching forward a hand as though she wants to rip it from the fake sky, and the next she is drifting through a lazy summer, most often holding hands with Finn. But sometimes Finn doesn't want to hold hands; he looks at her from his place in the corner with Kurt and he seems to wonder why she's suddenly so affectionate towards him, more like he used to be. But in those other times he's with her, and kissing her, and defending her to the malicious bloggers who go to school with them—and it's just so confusing, how he sometimes wants her and sometimes treats her like a leper.

She mostly stays indoors, shaking fingers sticking together with every different color of glitter glue because she was never that great at crafts, and the only thing that she ever ends up making at those damn stars. They started out as gold stars and have become every color, from silver to green to purple, and now she doesn't know how to make anything else. She was always pretty rotten at art, but when Jesse was around, she at least tried.

In reality—at least, what she thinks is reality, when she gets down to it—a month or so passes without him, where she rests in this haze of unknowingness, always wondering whether what she saw was the truth or not. The images swam before her eyes, sometimes blurry enough for her to _know_ they weren't real.

She wakes up thirty days after she has last seen him, staring at the ceiling of her room. For the first time in a week, she is not restrained. There are still marks on her wrists from pulling on the restraints for the past several nights, but at least now there are no new ones. She rubs them absentmindedly in between dressing—in her own clothes, because at this level they're allowed. She can't have a belt or shoelaces, but it's all the better for her to wear mary-janes, she thinks.

At ten-thirty, she plays the piano in the yellow room. It's confusing—sometimes she and Jesse were the only ones who liked to perform, and other times they were all New Directions. Rachel tries not to think too hard about it.

Will puts his hand on her shoulder gently, and she hits a sour note on the keys. She looks up at him curiously; she wants to ask him how she was doing, but she thinks right now he doesn't know much about music, just about hospital procedures.

"Jesse wants to see you," he says, and she stands so quickly that he has to find her wrists to make sure she isn't about to hurt him or herself. "Will you be okay?"

She nods, and she follows him to the elevator, almost bouncing with a mixture of excitement and nausea at the idea of seeing him again. After all this time, she hasn't even really known if he was alive or dead. None of them knew.

They go to the third floor—on the fourth floor, where Jesse probably was before, they aren't allowed visitors—and Will walks Rachel down to the hallway slowly, before they come to a room with several plastic tables and chairs. She's never been here before. She was never really violent. She just couldn't function outside.

Rachel sits on one of the plastic chairs and waits, tapping her foot against the dull gray tile. There are two orderlies whose job it is to make sure that nobody gets stabbed to death in this room. They look at her, because she's the only person in the room. Visiting hours aren't for another few hours; she got to come because she lives there, too.

Jesse is led in; his head is down. He doesn't meet her eye until he's sitting across from her.

Rachel reaches forward to grab both of his handcuffed hands. He looks like a criminal. It makes her feel sick.

"I thought you were dead," she says, sounding very like a lost child. And she feels like it too, like she's floating in the large room; it's too large, it makes her feel like the orderlies are very far away, like she could freak out now and they couldn't help her at all. Some blackness creeps around the edge of her vision, but she swallows and blinks it away, knowing that just seeing Jesse was no reason for her to freak out like this. He didn't need it, and neither did she.

"I tried."

Rachel looks back up, from where she was looking at their touching hands. She meets his eye, and he looks the most vulnerable that he ever had. She notices the bruises on his throat—they must have looked much worse when he gave them to himself. They've had a month to nearly disappear.

"Why would you do that?" Rachel doesn't understand the urge, because she has never wanted to die. She has been confused, and distraught, and paranoid, and friendless, but never wanted to die. Through it all, she has had her dads—they're torn apart by her being here, but they visit every day that they can, and they remind her that they love her, and bring her food and new clothes. She realizes, only after she asked the question, that Jesse has none of that.

He blinks at her.

"I don't think you understand how hard life is for me."

Rachel bristles a little, but doesn't let go of his hands. "I do, Jesse. You know what I go through, don't you? I hear things that aren't real just like you do."

"I know, but… it's so… overwhelming," he says, sounding unbearably broken, like all of them have beaten him down until he's nothing but a shell for them to inhabit. "It was easier when I was a kid. I only knew about one of them. I only knew he was there. Different than me, but not hostile. Almost like a friend."

Rachel nods; Jesse didn't talk about his condition much, but when he did, she wanted him to know that she was really listening. Because she does care about how he felt, even if she's a little self-absorbed sometimes.

"Do you know how many there are?" he asks her.

"Twenty-nine."

"Yeah. Twenty-nine, and there's me. Do you know how hard it is to have myself be heard? We're all talking at the same time, Rachel, and sometimes I feel like I'm not even there."

Jesse sounds so tired, so resigned. It makes Rachel's heart ache. But she still doesn't understand him, not really.

"Things have been hard for me too," she says, a little resentfully.

Jesse sighs; Rachel knows it's because he thinks she's being selfish, but things _have_ been hard for her. "Yeah?"

"Yes. You egged me, with Vocal Adrenaline, and you won Regionals, and then school ended and Finn and I started dating—only sometimes he didn't act like we were and sometimes he did—but then he broke up with me and—you know, it was bad, but still there were those—those scars you left, Jesse, when you joined Vocal Adrenaline again—"

"Rachel," Jesse says, interrupting.

"What?"

He leans forward, looking deeply into her eyes, clutching her hands more tightly.

"Vocal Adrenaline _isn't real_."

Rachel bites her lip. "I saw—"

"Rachel. You know they aren't real. What happened to you while I was here? You were starting—you were starting to do better. Have you been taking your medication?"

"I—I mean, when I can stomach it—when I can eat…"

"They're all in my head, and in yours," he says firmly. "They're delusions. They can't hurt you, because they aren't real."

She looks away. She wants to argue, because they are so real, to her. Andrea and Chris and—all of them. But then she remembers—in the yellow room, she's never seen them. She's never seen them anywhere but in those times that she knows… she knows, intellectually, that those times are in her head. That's what the psychiatrist tells her, that's what she feels when she's on her meds. But she hasn't been on them recently.

"I know."

Jesse smiles at her. "I get to come back in a week."

"You do?"

"I do. I've been talking to my psychologist every day, twice a day, and I've convinced her that I'm okay. I—Sometimes—Sometimes it all hurts so much that dying would be a relief. And I'd give anything just to escape. But you know what's been keeping me sane in the last month?"

"What?"

"You."

He leaned forward, then, resting his weight on his forearms, and kissed her gently.

Rachel's heart beats against her chest rapidly; this is something she's wanted ever since she came here, ever since she met Jesse. She always had a crush on him; everyone knew about it, especially since she started hallucinating that they were dating. He'd always put up with her delusions, allowed her to think, sometimes, that they were going out, and he'd held her hand when she needed it. And now he's kissing her.

"Me?" she says, when they break apart.

"You."


End file.
